Engineered for Greatness

I’m blogging the crap outta this house. Seriously. I’m all over this place like fat on a pig.

One of the most recent questions we have gotten is “when are you gonna start the nursery?!” to which I reply…”I have no idea!”

As much as I would love to dive right in…that’s just not my style. I simultaneously can’t wait…and can. It’s exciting to think about all the possibilities, the themes, the crazy ideas and the cool looks that we could incorporate. But on the other hand, this house is overwhelming to me and if I start too many projects without finishing…well…anything…it is enough to drive a to-do list crazy.

So one of my goals is that I will not start the little babies’ room till I get Will’s room in working order. Recently I showed ya’ll what it looked like…

I hated the way it looked unbalanced and unfinished. So I decided to tackle the Pin-popular project of engineer prints that everyone and their frenemies have tackled. I can’t remember where I first saw this…but basically if you punch in “$5 engineer print art” in Pinterest, there are four thousand different ways to do this. First, you go to Staples (or any other home office store) and ask for their engineer print sizes. I got the biggest one – it’s huge – and it cost $5 to print out your photo. They can only print in black & white so I recommend making your photo b&w before you go…their version of b&w is not-so-cute.

And then you go to Lowe’s or Home Depot and pick up a piece of insulation board. It’s super lightweight and huge. They are about $17 and in the section with the plywood and the insulation. Oh and you can use one board to make two of the biggest prints…so that goes to show how big they are.

First you trim your photo print. Then you cut the board to size…it helps to use an Xacto knife. Also – if you can’t get a perfect cut – just use a bit of rough sandpaper to even out the sides. It makes a mess but it’s worth it.

I decided to paint the edges…I figured the purple didn’t really go with Will’s room 🙂 So I mixed up a bit of orangey red craft paint and then did a couple coats with a craft brush. It was super easy and fast.

After it was all dry, I used a regular glue stick to apply the print in the board.

And now it looks like this all hung and beautiful…

You may have noticed that I switched the toy chest and the dresser. Maybe you didn’t notice. It just fit better this way with the teepee in the room. And since the toy chest is really more important than any other piece of furniture in the mind of the two year old, it was a nice way to give the kid more play room.

One of my globes fell down. Ooops. I guess that is like Armegeddon? We still haven’t hung it up.

I also switched up the art….FINALLY. It only took me a year.

I still have one more canvas to work on. I’m brainstorming ideas to balance out everything. And I wanna stencil the curtains. Something simple and bold. Statement curtains.

One of my favorite new additions is the little hanging acrobatic bear that now lives on Will’s tent. I got him for a buck at a little thrift store. He’s so ugly he’s cute 🙂

I also rearranged the books and the toys. I love the addition of the basket and the scorpion. It’s funny how little things makes a room more personalized. Like the little stuffed zebra (the animal I associate with Will now) and the owl (the animal I associate with his newbornie self because of his old nursery).

We also moved out the changing pad. No…Will is not potty trained. Not even close. Not even crate trained. He’s just really long…too long for his changing pad…he’s constantly hanging off the pad…either his head or his legs. So we figured that it was way easier to just take the pad and put it in the stack of things we wanna use in the little babies nursery.

Also I got a new lamp. $5 at the thrift store plus a Walmart shade. And a new trashcan (it’s actually a woven plant holder from Michael’s but it works great for a trashcan). It was $6 on clearance.

The rest of the room is still the same. I kinda want one of those cow hide rugs for in here…but I don’t think Will would appreciate it as much as I would.

Comments

Im in the state you are in… expecting our second son in beginning of October. Our boy is almost two years old so it is really fun to read your blog! 🙂

What Im thinking is: Why dont you switch out Wills crib to a “big boy bed”? We did that now so that we can reuse the crib for the new baby. We dont want to have two cribs to get rid of after the boys have outgrown them. And I understood that Will can already get out of the crib anyway so why keep it for him? Is that something Amarican that I dont get?

Love it! It loooks amazing. I havent even gotten to thinking about the baby yet, but he/she will be in our room for a while, so I guess its ok. Although I should probably wash the bassinet and get it ready, this pregnancy is going so fast

I love the artwork and additions to Will’s room. I desperately need to work on my daughter’s room… she’s 3 and there are some blank walls. Does that make me a bad mom? Or am I just overworked for the past 3 years between finishing up one degree, earning my master’s degree, working full time and being mommy?? I’m to the point that I almost want to wait until we move her into her big girl room to decorate… or buy things that’ll work for both like I’m actually trying to do. Is it bad that I have more planned for a future nursery (well, if it’s a boy… but I’m not even pregnant) than I did for my first baby?

His room is coming along great! Love all the little personal touches. Definitely agree that the toy chest and dresser work better how they are re-arranged. Did you consider big bold navy horizontal stripes for the curtains?

Engineer prints.. very cool. I like it. I’ve never heard of those for decorative uses and I’m an actual engineer. Although it may be because a.) I’m not a lady. b.) I rarely use pinterest. Really looking forward to your next nursery project. Will’s room is amazing.

I totally get it with not wanting to move too fast or you get overwhelmed. Our baby is due in 9 weeks, and I’m just getting started on the Nursery now, because before we started we promised to finish our 2 bathroom remodels and a step refacing project. It has been a crazy pregnancy living in a construction zone, but I’m so excited to finally get a start on my baby’s room! http://oneprojectatatime.blogspot.com/2012/08/un-build-built-in.html

I tried to do an engineer print, but the paper wrinkled and the edges of my foam board crumbled and the Command strips I tried to use to hang it failed and it dropped to the ground and crunched. Thrice before I gave up. I love the way it looks in Will’s room. Next time I’ll try the sandpaper & glue stick!

That owl and train on the dresser wouldnt last two seconds in my house. My son would have those things down and playing with them. Am I the only one with kids that mess with things? Lol! I bought a bunch of old train cars from a train show this past winter and have intentions of displaying them on shelves for my 2 1/2 yr old’s room along with hanging printed out pics of real trains to make him a big boy train room that will grow with him. I’m worried he will climb the walls and hang from the shelves and take those trains down. Needless to say, I havent tackled the project yet. Plus I am waiting on my Passport card to come so I can go to IKEA in Canada just over the border so I can get some frames.

I think Will’s room looks great, and I love how you do things slowly…. it seems so realistic to me-your revisiting rooms as you find things in real time and as they fit in your budget. Love. It makes me feel better about my own home and not getting rooms together for months or years! Thanks for all the inspiration. Keep it comin!

Also, when you wrote “engineer print” I thought that meant like an engineering site plan made into art, or something (I’m a civil engineer… maybe that’s why!)… and I was all like, “oh, is that popular these days?” 🙂 Ha ha!

Your engineering print turned out great! I love the orangey color on the edges! I also like the dresser & toy cabinet switched – feels more balanced. Can’t wait to see what you dream up for the new nursery! Sarah

Maybe it’s Tuesday. Maybe it’s because I have yet to fully wake up, but I found that to be literally laugh out loud hilarious.

And I think you should start making those tee-pee’s and selling them on Etsy. I will be your first costumer and my yet-to-be-made-child will be envy of his/her friends. Heck, my husband would be the envy of HIS friends.

I love the print! I’m failure with large format printing (like plans and stuff) but not photos. If I have a DSLR and shoot in raw, will I have to do anything special to print my photo so it’s not blurry? How big is the print you made? Thanks!

Ok, so I have a question… I don’t do photography at all, I love to take pictures but I know nothing about settings or anything but, we have a DSLR and I’m wanting to do the photo thing from Pintrest as well. So how do I know if my photo is good enough quality to make that big?

I love Will’s accent wall, the burlap looks amazing with all the art hanging up. My favorite thing so far is that orange ottoman it really adds a pop of color. Everything is coming together very well. 🙂

love the room. and my 3 year old isn’t even close to being potty trained. and i’m not even trying at this point. i figured i had until kindergarten to get on that 🙂 once he’s ready i think it’ll go a whole lot easier. his older brother was in pullups forever – over a year and that got really expensive. so we’re trying a different approach this time. we’ll see how it goes

Well I’ve seen plenty of those big prints before but I never knew they were engineer prints. Thanks for sharing that tidbit because now I can do the project I’ve been planning out in my head. Your print of Will looks great and of course so does his room. 🙂

BTW, I did not have my nursery ready for my first born or my second. It wasn’t my style. I didn’t care about matchy matchy themes and what not. It irked people but I was like, “Tthe baby does not care about the curtains, rug, wall decor, etc. He just wants to eat and sleep.”

Get the cow hide rug! I just got one for my husband’s office, after convincing him that a rug over carpet was totally in. Might have had to use Pinterest to “prove” this to him… And it’s awesome. My kids like how soft it is, and I liked the Ikea price tag:)

haha…nothing. I tell him he has to stay upstairs. or stay downstairs. The other thing is, we have an alarm…so we can set it so that we can move freely upstairs but if he goes even a quarter of the way downstairs, then the big alarm goes off. He’s learned that he does not like the big alarm. So now he knows that he needs to stay on whatever floor we are on.
xo – kb

Check out ZGallerie’s faux animal rug. Costs less than the real thing, could be friends with your zebra rug, you’ll have less guilt & it’s kid friendly. I love ours! I can see it being used in many different rooms for years to come.

I know this is from yesterday but I was wondering. How did you cut the board with such a clean edge? I’ve seen them done very poorly on other blogs but yours looks amazing! They also used exacto knives/box cutters… Did you have a special technique

Do you think that you will coordinate the two boys’ bedrooms? We are having our 2nd in January and the new baby will be across the hall from our 2 year old son. We are renovating our 2nd floor so we will have a blank slate to work with – just trying to figure out how to coordinate the two bedrooms without them being too matchy-matchy!

I used an Xacto knife and cut it straight as I could but it was definitely still jagged. I used some rough sand paper to smooth them out – it ‘shaved’ off that mess to make it definitely more perfect!
xo – kb

how come you used a glue stick and not spray adhesive for your print? I have a poster I’m getting ready to hang and was wondering the pros and cons? I don’t want adhesive bleeding through! Did the glue stick hold it well? My poster is 5’x3′, so I need it to hold on strong!

I used a glue stick because the spray adhesive tends to be a little wet and the paper was really thin. I didn’t want his face to be all bleedy and smeared…especially since the closest Staples is like a thirty minute drive. And the glue stick held it really well…I applied it very liberally and used books to hold it down that first night.
xo – kb

Hi Katie, I wanted to come by and say hi personally after “meeting” you at the Frog Tape call. I love, love, love this idea. It’s the perfect way to hang a big photo without the weight. Totally falls into the “why didn’t I think of that” category:)

I so want to do this on the wall coming up our stairs but I’m terrified I will screw it up….anywho I came back to check comments to see if there were any extra tips and I just wanted to say how awesome it is that you answer as many questions as you can from your followers even if the question has been asked a million times!

Katy,
I love this room!!! I found you through the Petersik’s blog and you guys are all just too stinkin’ cute! I love your blog, and you girl are funny, funny, funny! Not your looks, just your sense of humor! Can you say mucus plug???
Seriously, I love reading your blog. Your family is precious.
P.S. My best friend lives in Alpharetta, I’d love to meet you one day!
I’m your mom’s age, but hey, I love friends of all ages.
Love,
Jude

Am I the only one on the internet who totally failed at this engineered print thing?! I used insulation board, but it was more like Styrofoam. As soon as I cut it, those little white beads were everywhere and then I was chasing my 14 month old who thought those beads were the most delicious snack…

Did that happen to you? Did the sandpaper really help? I’ve abandoned ship on this project 🙁

So I know this is an old post so I hope you get this message (maybe you can just email me back at tisha.klingensmith AT yahoo DOT com)
What is that stuff on the wall behind his crib?? I love it! Where did you find it and how do I do that!?? Thank you!
Tisha

So I just ordered a print through Staples because of this and it was $1.81!! Wahhooo!
Just curious, the glue stick glue is still sticking??? Just trying to figure out what to do to attach mine to a canvas I already have! Thanks for the great idea!

Thanks!! I tried this last night and unfortunately the glue stick was a fail on my canvas! I didn’t think about how it’s not solid throughout! Tried Mod-Podge for paper and it worked, although my print was already ripped! Good thing I can afford to get another for $1.81! I will be revisiting this tonight! Thanks again!

The white furniture’s really looks awesome!
These simple but awesome looking furniture’s can make a room more gorgeous. I’m in a trouble with organizing my kids toys. You did it so nicely…you are so great.

For my first child, I inquired about bunks and regardless of whether I “required” one. I looked into the Montessori technique and the idea that a story bed is more secure and better for an infant. I likewise investigated just having my lounger.